GPIB and MAX issues

[ciro_unc]

I am pretty new to this GPIB business so I hope this isn't too stupid of a question.
MAX 2.0 is not recognizing our PCI-GPIB card (it is made by computerboards not NI). When I search for it under device (in MAX) I just see the com and lpt1 ports. When I look under the system folder/device manager, I see the card under CBI_GPIB perfectly fine. The weird thing is that if I use a simple GPIB vi in labview it can communicate with my device fine. If I try using the VISA interactive controller I am not able to see the card either. I updated the drivers in MAX but I don't think that should have a lot to do with it.

please help.

thanks,
ciro

[DiegoF]

Hi,

It is not a stupid question. At first it is a little confusing to see the relation between the components.

MAX will only shows NI boards. Each hardware on your system has a device driver, which allows the communication with the device. For the NI PCI-GPIB board the driver is NI-488.2. MAX knows how to communicate with the driver to configure the board. MAX is basically a configuration and test utility. Also, the driver is in charge of providing the language interface files, so you can use the device with certain programming enviroments. So the NI-488.2 offers header and c files for C, .bas file for Visual Basic and VI for LabVIEW. These components only access the NI-488.2, so they only work for NI GPIB interfaces.

The computerboard GPIB interf
ace needs to have its own driver, its configuration utility and provide the appropriate interface files (VIs, h and c files, etc). Check the board's user manual for details.

DiegoF
National Instruments.

[ciro_unc]

Just a quick follow-up question. The reason I am researching this is that I found some drivers for an HP device (HP4284A) on the NI website. I tried using the vi's but they haven't worked. I found that the vi's were not recognizing the gpib device. I know that the vi's are using the VISA protocol. Since I am not using an NI board does that mean that VISA will not recognise the device either?? I tried using that control interface for VISA and it doesn't know it is there.

thanks again,

ciro

[DiegoF]

Hi,

It depends if the driver of the board is VISA can interface with VISA. You should contact ComputerBoards for information on how to comunicate with VISA.

Here are a couple of KB articles that deal with comunicating with HP boards. As you can see, the HP driver provides some configuration utilities to use the boards with NI-VISA.

DiegoF.
National Instruments

[DiegoF]

Hi,

forgot to copy the links:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/3efedde4322fef19862567740067f3cc/3b3626d9c1f999218625694200791ad7?OpenDocument

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/3efedde4322fef19862567740067f3cc/e56d3d4866be0a8a86256942006626f0?OpenDocument

Diego